Sunday, March 30, 2008

Travel Knitting

I'm just back from a trip to the east coast to visit my brother, my partner's brother, and their families. We have two almost-5-year-old nephews (one for each brother) who we do not see nearly enough, and it was a lovely trip.

I decided not to bring my laptop with me so I could be on vacation, really on vacation. So my days were filled with reading, photography, hanging out with family, playing with kids, and knitting. For the trip, I decided to go back to a pattern I tried last summer with a different yarn.

I've finished 2 & 1/2 lace shawls since I first tried this shawl, and I can really tell that I'm a more accomplished lace knitter now. I'm able to "read" my knitting, which made it very easy to memorized the pattern. I'm being daring and am knitting without a lifeline! The only problem I've encountered is that that pattern has big patches of stockinette stitch, and I don't count the stitches during those sections - I just knit till I reach the part of the pattern that indicates it's time for a yarnover or a decrease - only to discover eight rows later that I made a mistake. I must confess I've mostly been correcting them without going backwards - knitting two or four instead of three together, for example. Amazingly, my perfectionism has mostly been okay with this.

I actually brought two new lace shawl projects with me, and found myself trying to push through the knitting on Tuscany so that I could start the second shawl. But I remembered that I was on vacation, having fun, and wanted to savor the knitting. So I let the pace be slow. I'm currently at 8 repeats out of 11, and enjoying my way through the shawl.